A lesson learned too late -- Motivation and promise -- Parties and voters under coalition governance -- Perceptions of coalition compromise -- Costs of coalition compromise -- Collective responsibility and differentiation -- What could go wrong? -- Does it ever go right? -- Pushing forward
Summary
"The ailing Liberal Democrats limped into their 2011 annual conference needing to discuss a new strategy. In the year and half since joining the Conservatives in Britain's first formal coalition government since the second World War their popularity had been halved and it was time for a change. Clegg and the Liberal Democrats had spent the last year learning what many of their continental counterparts have long known: cooperation with one's coalition partners is vital to the cabinet's ability to govern effectively, but this cooperation may often come at the cost of electoral capital. Votes are won on the promise of pursuing a core set of policies, not on the promise of cooperation with some (often as yet unnamed) partners in coalition. Voters choose parties, at least in part, with the understanding that they will adhere to these campaign promises. And, should those parties appear to shirk their charge -- to trade away or otherwise undermine their stated policy goals in a series of bargains or log rolls with their coalition partners -- their supporters will likely interpret these actions as evidence that the party had misrepresented its goals, that its goals have evolved, or, more immediately worrisome, as evidence of manifest incompetence"-- Provided by publisher
